


Aftershocks

by MuseofWriting



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Aftermath, Character Study, Gen, mild implications of ptsd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 06:40:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17955497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuseofWriting/pseuds/MuseofWriting
Summary: When the butterfly flits away on bright white wings, it leaves no memories. There is only a vague impression of rage, a seemingly righteous fury that burned away all other awareness. Rarely, the sound of a man’s voice echoes in their ears like the memory of a dream, giving them a name, offering them a deal.





	Aftershocks

**Author's Note:**

> An earlier version of this fic was published on my tumblr [here](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/post/176576779237/aftershocks). A lot of it is the same, but parts of it have been cleaned up or expanded.

            “Father?” He called it after Gabriel’s retreating back, and the question tumbled out before he’d thought about what he was saying. “What was it like? Being akumatized?”

———

            Alya shrugged, the movement sliding her slightly off the couch. “I mean, it’s not like you really remember it.” She flicked her finger across the phone rapid-fire, dismissing notifications. “Or at least, I don’t. I just sort of— whited out.”

———

            Ivan doesn’t talk about it much. He’s never been talkative, and despite the burningly curious stares he knows they’re all giving him, he doesn’t want to answer their questions. He couldn’t tell them what they want, anyway. All he can recall is the anger, the blinding searing anger that left it impossible to think. He endures the stares and glares any questioners into silence. The attention subsides when, a week later, the second attack comes. Curiosity deflects onto the next victim, and then the one after that, and eventually he’s not really special anymore, just the first in a long line of people who get to see their worst selves loosed on the world. 

*

            Nino remembers _bubbles_. He remembers a feeling of weightlessness, as if he’d rebelled against gravity itself. He walks through the park and sees children blowing bubbles – innocent bubbles, real bubbles, nothing but soap and water whispered into existence on an afternoon breeze – and he can’t help but stare. Rainbows shine faintly on their sides like false promises, before the wind carries them into the shadow of a tree, where they soundlessly pop. He dreams of opaque spheres that fall to earth and shatter open like glass snow globes, spilling human bones.

*

            Alya rewatches the footage of it, over and over. Some of it she filmed and broadcast herself. Some of it came from the regular news cameras, and some of it she trawled from Twitter and Instagram. Some people sent their own videos straight to her, through her blog’s submission page. She edits it all methodically, piecing the footage together piece by piece, setting it out simply, chronologically. She pauses on her own face, caught in a rictus of obsessive triumph as her fingers curl around the edge of a mask. She struggles to understand that face as _her_ , and not some creature created wholesale from fluttering black wings.

*

            Her brother got a play-by-play of every moment, published on a blog for the world to see. Alix has confusing fragments and contradictory accounts, which can’t seem to resolve themselves into a single narrative. Her brother feels compelled to study his transformation, buried in notes of his attempted murder. She has a blurry photo of herself, doubled and altered, and no one who can explain how or why. Her stomach roils every time she hears an akuma alarm, imagination run wild gathering into a tight knot of dread. Her suspicions are more frightening than any truth could be.

*

            They reclaim their worst selves together. It was harder when it was just Nathaniel, for months on end, scribbling fragmentary scenarios, sketching an impossible universe. But Marc gets it, in a way that most of them don’t seem to, and between them, they rewrite their lowest moments into heroism. They are not the puppets of someone else’s malice.

*

            The miraculous cure works excellently on demolished buildings or broken watches or zombie armies. It works less well on hurt feelings. By the time Kim is himself again, the damage is done. He hears the gossip wandering around school. So sad, they broke up on _Valentine’s Day_ , they had a big fight on _Valentine’s Day_ , they’re going on a makeup date after _Valentine’s Day_. He ducks his head and hurries past and tries not to imagine accusing stares following him. He goes to swim practice and dives for a watch, and when he opens it, just two words are written on the paper: _I understand_. Ondine offers a hand to pull him out, and if he squeezes it a bit tighter than is strictly necessary, no one needs to know.

*

            There weren’t very many horror movies in their house to begin with, but when she gets home Mylène quietly gathers them up and throws them all away. Nino sends her the final version of the footage, and she turns the sound off, turns on all her lights, pulls up the blind to let in as much sunlight as possible, and presses play. She stops when she finds herself and pauses the video, freezing the face into unmoving pixels. She doesn’t stare at it for long before she closes the window and drags the file into the trash. She texts Ivan later. He’s the only other one who was turned into a literal monster.

*

            Max and Markov don’t talk about feelings. The vocabulary is too messy, the experience too unquantifiable. How were you supposed to articulate the illogical, explain something you yourself did not fully recognize or understand beyond the fact that it _felt bad_? There is, at least, a reassurance in their mutual loss for words. They understand the particular terror of being throttled by rage and frustration and abandonment and failure until those feelings overpower any rational thought.

* 

            Sabrina tries to bring it up only once, and when Chloe speaks right over her, requesting Sabrina fetch her red heels, she never says anything again. She can’t get that upset again, she thinks. She can’t let Chloe’s worse moments get to her, or she risks losing herself again, and that means she risks losing Chloe. She tamps down her anger and frustration and tells herself she’s happy.

*

            Chloe doesn’t _do_ self-reflection or regrets. She doesn’t have a problem, she doesn’t need to get over anything. She was _right_ , anyway. And she doesn’t remember it. Well, except for one vaguely unsettling thing, but she’s sure that she was just confused, or that everyone felt the same. She just doesn’t understand why her last lucid thought before she gleefully embraced her rage would have been, _I know that voice._

*

            Juleka doesn’t understand the girl in the pictures. The ones her classmates took with her – those are perfect, they’re tacked up all over her room, and they make her feel warm inside whenever she looks at them. But the ones of the _other_ her. She doesn’t understand what led to that face. She doesn’t understand who this doppelgänger is. She can’t see herself reflected there, bubblegum pink and dolled up like some kind of perverse Barbie. She never wants to see another picture of that face again.

*

            It wasn’t that bad, Rose thinks, compared to others who brought down the Eiffel Tower or mind-wiped half of Paris. She tried to marry Ali, which was weird, but it really wasn’t that bad. She really doesn’t want to compare herself to someone like Nino or Kim, it doesn’t seem fair. She shouldn’t be that upset about it. But when her grandmother sends her a perfume bottle for her birthday, she stares at it for a very long time before she throws it away, gently dropping it into a dumpster, careful not to let the bottle break and release its scent into the air.

———

            “So how come you’re the lucky one?”

            “Hmm?” Marinette responded absently, more focused on her sketchbook than Alya, trying to capture the cut of a jacket she’d seen that morning before it blurred too much in her memory.

            “How come _you’re_ the only one who hasn’t been akumatized?” Alya was sprawled across Marinette’s couch, looking at her upside down, flipping through comments on the Ladyblog. “Everyone else in our class has. You’d think Hawk Moth has some kind of grudge against us. Everyone except _you_.”

            Marinette, pulled out of her concentration by the mention of akumas, set her pencil down. “That’s not true! she protested. “A–Adrien hasn’t either! Not that Adrien ever _would_ , of course, he’s far too nice and sweet and kind, not that that really protects you from Hawk Moth, but still he—” Alya interrupted her by laughing.

            “Chill, girl,” she said. “You’re right, I forgot about Adrien – mixed him up with the like four akuma attacks that have happened at his house. Alright, so you and Adrien. What makes you two the lucky duo?” Marinette went red and tried to hide her stutter with a laugh.

            “We’re not— I mean— The akuma that got Miss Bustier was supposed to be for me. It’ll probably happen sooner or later.” She tucked her hair behind her ear to hide the subconscious movement she’d made towards her earrings. “Unless Ladybug and Chat Noir catch Hawk Moth first.” She was counting on that. She had nightmares of butterflies closing in on her from all sides, of Chat’s voice calling distantly for help, of knowing that without her, no one could cure the akuma.

            “Well, once you and Adrien both have your supervillain stint we’ll need to start a club,” Alya said, looking up from her phone and smirking. “Miss Bustier’s class: all your favorite akumas, all in one place. We can have a costume party dressed as our supervillain selves.”

            “Do you think people would really want to do that?” Marinette asked doubtfully.

            Alya shrugged, the movement sliding her slightly off the couch. “I mean, it’s not like you really remember it.” She flicked her finger across the phone rapid-fire, dismissing notifications. “Or at least, I don’t. I just sort of— whited out.”

            “Still.” Marinette worried her bottom lip. “It’s kind of morbid, isn’t it?” Alya’s finger paused, and she glanced upside-down at Marinette.

            “We’ve got to laugh about it sometime,” she said. She returned to moderating comments. “Otherwise, it just tears you up inside.”

 ———

            “Adrien?”

            Adrien started, and guiltily put the child’s drawing back on the shelf. His father approached him, face unreadable, and studied the picture Adrien had been examining. He turned to look at Adrien and raised his eyebrows.

            “It was one of the things you—” He swallowed and looked away. Adrien hadn’t seen the Collector’s destruction, only Chat had, and he didn’t need any complicated conversations about where he’d been that day. “I’d almost forgotten you kept this.” Gabriel’s face continued to betray nothing as he turned his gaze back to the picture. He reached out and closed the cabinet, locking it away.

            “Your mother had it framed,” he said, and Adrien tensed. Gabriel turned back to him. “Shouldn’t you be at your Chinese lesson?” he asked. “I trust your regular teacher is back today.” Adrien felt a jolt of nerves. He still couldn’t quite believe the way that Fu had just _walked in_ , as if it were perfectly normal for a magical benefactor to masquerade as a substitute Chinese teacher. Still, there was no reason his father should notice anything strange about “Mr. Chan.”

            “He’s running late,” Adrien explained. “Bad traffic after the akuma attack.” Gabriel’s lips pressed together thinly.

            “Go study in the meanwhile,” he instructed.

            “Father?” He called it after Gabriel’s retreating back, and the question tumbled out before he’d thought about what he was saying. “What was it like, being akumatized?”

            He wasn’t sure why he said it. Maybe lingering unwanted suspicions that his father might somehow still be Hawk Moth prompted him, trying to catch him in a lie. Maybe it was because he normally ducked out of akuma conversations, nervous he might forget himself and let something slip. Maybe he was just looking for his father to talk honestly about himself, for once, about anything besides work. He felt Plagg shift in his pocket, felt him practically buzz with surprise and sudden alertness. Gabriel had paused, stiff-backed and silent. Adrien resisted the urge to run.

            Gabriel turned back to face him, a frown creasing his forehead in a way that Adrien might have almost mistaken for concern. He reached out and laid a hand on Adrien’s shoulder. “It’s nothing you’ll ever have to experience,” he said. Adrien frowned, shook his head.

            “Almost everyone in my class has been akumatized besides me,” he said. “Anyone could be next.” Gabriel pressed his lips together again, and something dark flitted across his eyes. He squeezed Adrien’s shoulder.

            “It doesn’t feel like much of anything,” he answered. “I have no memory of it. It is less than a bad dream. But—” he hesitated minutely “—you should not let it worry you.” He released his shoulder somewhat abruptly and stepped back. “I think I hear your teacher at the gate. Enjoy your lesson.” He turned and left. Once he was out of the room, Plagg zipped out of Adrien’s pocket to hover by his head.

            “What did you ask him _that_ for?”

            Adrien didn’t answer. His shoulder felt cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Leave comments and kudos today to make your local writer happy and sustain them into their next work.
> 
> Come find me:  
> [Tumblr](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/)  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MuseofWriting)  
> [Dreamwidth](https://museofwriting.dreamwidth.org/)  
> [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/thatgirlonstage)


End file.
